Patent Office Action Success

Overcoming Section 112 and Section 103 Rejections in a Medical Device Patent Application

ZYL Law Firm helped obtain allowance for U.S. Patent Application No. 17/616,694 after a complex non-final Office Action involving claim clarity, structural claim architecture, and obviousness over multiple references.

Application No. 17/616,694 Notice of Allowance: May 1, 2026 USPTO Public Record
This case study is based on public USPTO records and generalized attorney work-product descriptions. Client identity, product names, and confidential business context are intentionally omitted.

Challenge

The application related to a peripheral vascular stent and was already in continued examination after a prior final rejection. The July 18, 2025 non-final Office Action raised multiple Section 112(b) issues involving antecedent basis and internal claim logic, and maintained a Section 103 rejection over Kariniemi in view of Cheng, with additional metal-stent references discussed during examiner interview.

The core difficulty was to convert a structure that could be dismissed as routine stent-pattern optimization into a precise topology: membrane-only connections, no metal connections between adjacent rings, mutually independent third openings, and a defined staggered sinusoidal-ring relationship.

112(b)Multiple antecedent-basis and consistency issues fixed
103Routine-optimization theory defeated
AllowedClaims 1, 3, 5, 8-19, and 23-25

Professional Defense

  • The response first cleaned up Section 112(b): “opening areas” became “openings,” the staggered distance was tied to the nearest peaks of adjacent support units, and the claim was clarified so the same distance could consistently remain less than one-half cycle.
  • The independent claim was rebuilt around a non-generic topology: mutually independent third openings communicating only with the nearest first and second openings, sinusoidal rings connected solely by a membrane, and no metal connection between adjacent rings.
  • For Kanesaka and Levinson, the response explained that their openings are voids in rigid metal frameworks, not independent membrane openings performing stress relief in a membrane-only connection structure.
  • For the Kariniemi/Cheng combination, the response argued teaching away and change in principle of operation: the cited metal stents depend on metallic struts for axial stability, while the claimed invention uses a tension-only membrane architecture.
  • The response reframed staggered distance as a structural parameter tied to membrane load transfer and the avoidance of fish-scaling, not a routine dimensional optimization of a conventional metal stent.

Result

The USPTO issued a Notice of Allowance on May 1, 2026. Although the examiner did not fully credit the Rule 1.132 declaration, the claims were allowed because the prior art did not teach or render obvious the combination of membrane-only connection, no metal connection, mutually independent third openings, and the defined staggered sinusoidal-ring arrangement. The case shows ZYL's ability to win allowance through claim reconstruction and technical-legal argument even when declaration evidence is not accepted as the primary basis for allowance.